“Save the superstition for the priests,” Ruc growled.
He couldn’t see my memory. With the hot darkness packed between us, he couldn’t see my hands trembling. “The delta is a place like any other place. More dangerous, maybe, but still just dirt and water, plants and animals.”
“And something else,” Chua said quietly.
I dragged myself free of my memories. “Did you see her?”
“Not her,” Chua replied. “The other two. Sinn and Hang Loc. I saw them first just as I killed Tem. They were watching, standing on a bank across the channel. I took them for men at first, called out, but what men would be standing naked on a mudbank with no boat, no spears, nothing but those beautiful, awful eyes?”
“What did they do?” I asked.
“Watched. For days they watched, followed me. I thought they were gone a dozen times only to find them around the next bend, through the next wall of rushes. They moved through the delta like shadows, like sunlight.”
“For creatures that love killing,” Ruc said, “these gods of yours seem to let a lot of people go.”
“I was too weak to hunt,” Chua replied. “After snake bites and spider bites I could barely move my left arm. Half my blood I had poured into the river. There was no sport in hunting me.”
“Maybe they’ll let us go this time, too,” Ruc said.
“No,” Chua said. “I go into the delta this time to die.”
“How do you know?” I asked.
“I feel it.”
“Sweet Intarra’s light,” Ruc burst out. “What is it about the Three that obliterates all capacity for rational thought? I’ll concede there may be something out there, something unbelievable. Maybe even Csestriim. I don’t understand why that means we need to abandon all reason and start speaking entirely in ominous, meaningless fragments.”
“Bring your rational thought with you into the delta,” Chua said. “All men should have something to cling to as they die.”
*
During the long silence while I waited for Chua to fall asleep, my mind shuttled back and forth between two problems. The first was one of devotion. All women die, but when the moment came, I wanted to go to my god a priestess rather than a failure. I had two days left to complete my Trial, two days in which to make two offerings: a pregnant woman and the love of my fucking life. Putting aside the vexations of the latter, even the first of the two kills suddenly looked improbable. There was a dearth of mothers ripe with new life inside the cell, unless Ela had been improbably careless in her liaisons. If we’d been free, out in the city itself, I could at least have completed that part of the Trial. As it was, I expected to be dragged directly from the cell to the delta. If there were some sort of trial, some public spectacle, I might manage to kill a woman en route, but that would do nothing to solve the other, larger problem.
Love.
I lay my head back against the stone wall of the cell and closed my eyes. I could remember Ruc’s hands on my skin, his mouth on mine, could remember him moving over me, inside me, those eyes, that scarred, bronze-brown skin flexing with the muscles beneath. That night with the Vuo Ton had brought us closer than we’d been when I first arrived in Dombang, and not just because of the sex. We’d survived the delta together, fought our way free of the crocs, found the Vuo Ton. Every challenge shared, every revelation, seemed to bind us closer. On the other hand, those revelations had their limits: almost everything I’d told him, everything except the story of my childhood sacrifice, had been a lie.
Is it possible to love a person you’ve lied to? Possible to love a person to whom you’ve told almost nothing but lies? How could I love Ruc if he didn’t know me, and how could he know me if I never told him the truth? Ela could love a man who’d never seen her before, love a man based only on the shape of his face or the work of his hands—but I was not Ela. To drop my guard, to test the full limit of my feeling for Ruc, I needed to know what he felt for me … and to know that, I needed to give him the truth.
But which truth? How much of it?
I came here to find you.
I came here to fall in love with you.
I came here to kill you.
The first two were all right, but the last statement seemed unlikely to kindle in him the unquenchable flame of desire. The ways of my lord are obscure. Even brave men misunderstand his justice and his mercy. Ruc’s comments to the Vuo Ton were evidence enough that he saw himself as a soldier, not a sacrifice. If I had more time, I could have explained it to him, I could have shown him the truth: sacrifice is part of who we are. Without it, nothing we do—not the loving or hating, the victories or defeat—mean anything. The Csestriim and the Nevariim were immortal vessels, but hollow. Antreem’s Mass would be impossible without its ending, and Ruc was a creature every bit as gorgeous and ungraspable as that mass. All true music ends. Death is no diminishment.
With more time, I might have explained this, but I didn’t have more time. I had two days. I couldn’t give him the whole truth of who I was or why I’d come, but maybe I could give him more. Maybe I could give him enough.
I opened my eyes, stared blankly into the dark. I could hear him breathing evenly beside me. He didn’t seem to be asleep.
This is a terrible gamble, I thought, then reminded myself that everything is a gamble. Life is a gamble. The only sure bet is death. I turned my face to him, glad he could not see me when I spoke.
“I started this.”
He shifted slightly. I could imagine his eyes on me. “For a short sentence, that’s remarkably unclear.”
I gathered myself. “The revolt.” The first words were the hardest, like the first few strokes in cold water when the chest constricts and breath comes jagged and uneven. “When I arrived in the city, I was the one who left the bloody hands everywhere.”
The air in the cell felt suddenly, dangerously still. I found myself tensing for a fight, turning slightly to face the coming attack, getting ready. I forced myself to stop. The whole point of the truth was to drop my guard, not to redouble it. Ruc was still as a boulder balanced at the top of a great cliff.
“Why?” he asked finally.
I hesitated. The whole point was to approach the truth, but just how close?
“You’re not Kettral,” Ruc said after a long pause.
I dragged in a long, unsteady breath. “No.”
I felt the space between us shift then deform beneath the weight of that single syllable.
“What are you?”
“I was hoping you would ask who.”
“I guess neither one of us is going to get what we’d hoped for tonight.”